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James Zadroga

News about James Zadroga, including commentary and archival articles published in The New York Times. More

James Zadroga was a New York police detective who worked for hundreds of hours on the smoldering pile at ground zero after the Sept. 11 attacks, and whose subsequent death led to a fierce public debate about the health problems suffered by rescue workers after 9/11.

The highly decorated detective, who died in January 2006 at the age of 34, did not smoke and had no history of asthma, and his family has long believed that his 450 grueling hours of work at ground zero had left his lungs fatally scarred with toxic chemicals, fiberglass and pulverized concrete.

That belief was reinforced in April 2006 by an autopsy by Dr. Gerard Breton, a retired pathologist who had worked for the Ocean County medical examiner’s office for a decade. He concluded “with a reasonable degree of medical certainty” that the death was due to respiratory failure that was “directly related to the 9/11 incident.”

The finding appeared to make the detective’s death one of the strongest cases arising out of post-Sept. 11 illnesses, and it gave momentum to lawsuits on behalf of thousands of responders, downtown residents and others claiming injuries related to 9/11.

However, New York City’s chief medical examiner, Dr. Charles S. Hirsch, rejected the finding that Mr. Zadroga’s death was directly related to his work at ground zero. He concluded that it was misuse of prescription medication, not World Trade Center dust, that caused the detective’s lung ailments.

The medical examiner’s conclusion quickly reopened old wounds and renewed debate on questions that had generated lawsuits on behalf of thousands of responders and residents of Lower Manhattan. And it prompted a round of responses: bitter comments by the victim’s family, demands for clarification by a congresswoman, and renewed pledges by Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg to seek health care and justice for all who have suffered as a result of 9/11.

In October 2007 Mayor Bloomberg also caused a storm of outrage while accepting an award at Harvard’s School of Public Health when he claimed that Zadroga was not a hero. '‘We wanted to have a hero and there are plenty of heroes,’' Bloomberg said. '‘It’s just in this case science says this was not a hero.’'